The Argument from the Autonomy of Ethics Against Theism

There are several secular ethical theories (e.g., contractarian theories, consequentialist theories, deontological theories, sentimentalist theories, etc.) that explain our moral intuitions better than religious accounts, such as divine command theory. This is surprising on standard forms of theism, since on those hypotheses, morality is not independent of the existence, nature, and/or commands of God. Therefore, the phenomenon of the autonomy of ethics is one piece of data in an inference to the best explanation for naturalism vis-a-vis theism.